Clinton sinks Sanders in New York: ‘This one’s personal’

Badly trailing Hillary Clinton in delegates and the popular vote despite his eight-of-nine winning streak, Bernie Sanders needed a dramatic moment in New York on Tuesday night to shake up the Democratic nomination contest before it’s simply too late.

Instead, it was Clinton who delivered the statement with a decisive win in her home state. With 90 precincts reporting, she led 58 to 42 percent, and was declared the winner by The Associated Press.

“Today you proved again, there’s no place like home,” she told a raucous crowd in New York City afterward. “This one’s personal,” she added of her victory.

The emphatic win by Clinton could finally put to rest lingering doubts about her struggles to stamp out the Vermont independent — and allow her to finally pivot in earnest to the general election as the slugfest continues on the Republican side.

A huge haul of 247 delegates, plus 44 superdelegates, is up for grabs — though the state’s complex, proportional allocation scheme makes a big swing in the totals for either candidate unlikely.

After a big loss in his native state for the Brooklyn-born Sanders, it won’t get any easier. Five states that vote on April 26 — Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island — are seen as largely playing to Clinton’s strengths. Ted Devine, a senior adviser to Sanders, told the AP late Tuesday night that the campaign would “assess where we are” after those contests.

Polling pointed to a sizable win for Clinton in New York — the main question Democratic insiders were debating heading into the election was whether she would prevail by single or double digits. Sanders played the expectations game from all angles, breathlessly telling supporters in an email over the weekend that a win would be “the most shocking upset in modern political history” and arguing that polls have repeatedly underestimated his strength, before seeming to acknowledge a likely defeat.

“What does it mean if I lose?” Sanders told CBS’ Charlie Rose on Monday. “It means that I lose.”

Speaking to supporters on Penn State University’s campus hours before polls closed across the border, Sanders predicted, “We’re going to do just fine tonight in New York.” Afterward, he flew back to his home state of Vermont. He told reporters when he landed that he planned “to get recharged and take a day off.”

Clinton, a seasoned veteran in New York campaigning after eight years as its senator and multiple statewide wins, campaigned with gusto, knowing a loss on her own turf would be a huge embarrassment. As she focused her efforts largely on New York City, making the rounds on niche media to compensate for Sanders’ $2 million spending advantage on the airwaves, Bill Clinton barnstormed upstate New York with as many as four events a day.

Clinton told a hip-hop radio show on Monday that she carries hot sauce with her everywhere she goes, and she sipped on bubble tea at Kung Fu Tea in Queens.

“I am hoping to do really well tomorrow,” Clinton told supporters at one campaign stop Monday. “I am hoping to wrap up the Democratic nomination. But! But. But I’m not taking anything for granted. I gotta quickly add that before anybody has the wrong impression.”

The tailored approach appeared to be paying off: The RealClearPolitics polling average for the New York Democratic primary had Clinton ahead of Sanders by 12 points heading into Election Day.

Sanders was just as aware of the stakes. New York has long leaped out on the primary calendar as a crucial opportunity for Sanders to have any semblance of a case that his late winning streak makes him the stronger general election candidate. Overtaking Clinton is all but impossible — he trails by 244 pledged delegates, or nearly 700 counting superdelegates — but an upset in the state would have given the Vermont lawmaker a potent talking point that the momentum and enthusiasm heading into the home stretch of nomination season was decidedly on his side.

Fresh off a big streak in recent contests, most notably Wisconsin two weeks ago, Sanders went after Clinton aggressively in New York. He mocked Clinton’s refusal to release transcripts of her $200,000-plus-a-pop speeches to Wall Street banks and accused her of playing both sides of the fracking debate. A rally he staged in Washington Square Park drew 27,000 people, another glaring reminder of the disconnect between delegate counts and raw enthusiasm for the two candidates.

But missteps hurt his efforts. His suggestion last week that Clinton was unqualified to be commander in chief dogged Sanders for days, and he was eventually forced to clean up, saying it was really Clinton’s judgment he was questioning.

“Today, 3 million people in the state of New York who are independents have lost their right to vote in the Democratic or Republican primary” — Bernie Sanders

Also working against him was New York’s closed primary system; only registered Democrats can cast ballots in the primary, walling off independents who make up a big chunk of Sanders’ support. Roughly 3 million voters in the state are not registered as Democrats or Republicans, including nearly a half-million registered independents.

“Today, 3 million people in the state of New York who are independents have lost their right to vote in the Democratic or Republican primary,” Sanders complained on Election Day. “That’s wrong.”

His campaign also seized on reports of voters having problems casting ballots on Tuesday.

“We are deeply disturbed by what we’re hearing from polling places across the state,” the Sanders campaign said in a statement. “From long lines and dramatic understaffing to longtime voters being forced to cast affidavit ballots and thousands of registered New Yorkers being dropped from the rolls, what’s happening today is a disgrace.”

But the size of Clinton’s win swamped those complaints and left Sanders without room to even claim a moral victory.